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The Worst Derelict Spaceships to Board

We didn’t get the idea of a crew boarding a derelict spaceship in a vacuum — wait, that didn’t come out right…

Our live production of Nostromo 2: Electric Alien Boogaloo is based on the many tales of crews exploring derelict spacecraft which inevitably leads to mayhem.

Well the folks over at Generation Films know all about this kind of mayhem, so they’ve compiled a list of ships you should definitely not board (as well as some other safety tips).

Warning, this will have spoilers for

  • The film Ad Astra
  • The TV series The Expanse
  • The video game Dead Space
  • The film Sunshine
  • The film Alien
  • The film Predators
  • The film Event Horizon
  • The film Pandorum

We’re still bummed we don’t get to do another live show like Nostromo 2 this year, but we’ll see about the future.

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Adapting Fairy Tales for Radio

Since we’re deep in the land of fairy tales with, it felt like a good time to some of the considerations we’ve had in adapting the stories you’re hearing on Through the Looking Glass.

For the most part, we’ve tried to keep to the straight text from a particular translation or version wherever possible. There’s two main reasons for this.

Firstly, it makes the production that much easier if we aren’t spending as much time adapting the work (if you’ve listened or read some of our other behind-the-scenes, you know some of our original series are written over the course of years). Now we do often need to examine several versions of a tale and sometimes synthesize a combination of versions, but that’s still less writing work than completely original scripts.

Secondly, we usually like the written version. It usually has more depth and more nuance than versions we may have seen adapted for the screen. There’s often darker tones here and there as the monsters can be truly monstrous, the heroes a bit more flawed, and the setbacks more charmingly convoluted.

That said, we have noticed a few issues that we have to look out for in every fairy tale as we set about adapting it.

For those of you who are backing us on Patreon, check out the full version of this post as this month’s bonus content!

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Listen Online! JAT Chat # 7 – May 2020

Bjorn and Bill talk about our upcoming 2020 season, including Through the Looking Glass and Quorum, and talk about how we’re figuring out how to do things when we’re all remote.

Length: 15:50

Rated AD-G, because we’re basically just talking.

Rated AD-G (Audio Drama “G”)
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May the Fourth Be With You! Star Wars Giveaway Time

We’re racing to get stuff ready for our 2020 season, but as folks on our mailing list know, we’re squeezing in one more giveaway before then.

And considering the week we’re in, it only made sense to do a Star Wars-themed giveaway.

For those of you who don’t know about the giveaways, we band together with a bunch of other independent creative folk, pick a bunch of goodies around a theme that we’d love to win ourselves — and then we put it out into the social media world. At the end of this week, someone wins all the goodies listed below.

So many of us here at JAT grew up with Star Wars and we thrilled to The Mandalorian this past Fall. Plus, listeners of Rogue Tyger have noted there’s a little bit of Captain Solo in Reg Macorum, and hey, next season they’ll be spending more time on the Frontier, what in the Star Wars galaxy would be the Outer Rim. So this giveaway just felt right.

So if you’re tempted by this giveaway, sign up by this Friday, May 8th before 6:30pm ET, because that’s when it ends.

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Quorum Season Two Draft Done!

We’ve been feeling the pressure this month between adjusting to life in the pandemic and trying to stay true to our planned 2020 schedule.

One bit of good news has been that Bill Coughlan has finished his revised draft of Quorum.

The whisky glass is optional

As you all probably know, Quorum has interweaving tales told from different perspectives. Currently we’ve been getting to know Jimmy Harmon, the titular gambler in The Gambler’s Tale. Both that first installment and this next one are 10-episode installments. One of the innovations Bill brought to our Jabberwocky workflow was to have the entire season, all 10 episodes, be one massive script. As a filmmaker, he already had software familiar to many screenwriters called Final Draft. He looked at the format I used from a bit of free software called Celtx and created a custom style that would work for audio theater.

For those of you backing us on Patreon, we go into some of the pros and cons we’ve found in doing season-long scripting.

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Mythology Bundle Giveaway

We haven’t done a giveaway since last July — and we know a lot of you might be racing through all sorts of books and films and, well, audio theater. So, once again, we’re teaming up with some other indie authors and artists to give one lucky person about $200 worth of mythology goodies. There’s no golden fleece, but plenty of mythological references we’d like to add to our mythology reference shelf here at Tulgey Wood Studios.

So if it looks cool, go ahead and sign up before this Friday, April 10th.

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Special Ides of March Update

We’re fans of Scriptnotes, so when we heard a recent episode about how they approach outlines and treatments, we decided that our Patreon bonus content for this month would be a chat about how we write scripts here at Jabberwocky Audio Theater. That joins over 20 pieces of bonus goodies our Patrons enjoy as a thank you for helping keep us on the air.

For those of you listening in to the podfeed, we dropped another one of our off-season JAT Jots. In this one, we actually explain the inspiration behind the Rogue Tyger character Lady Shohreh. Some of you may have already figured it out, but there is a twist!

Finally, for those of you who are subscribed to our mailing list, you’ll start seeing some links to some indie creators you might want to check out while you avoid large gatherings. It’s not just for Caesars any more!